Lou Gehrig didn't have Lou Gehrig's disease?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/sports/18gehrig.html?_r=1&src=tptw

Concussions = very serious business

 

That's one way to get publicity for your study.
An unprovable theory that makes for a first-rate, gonna-grab-everybody headline.
I'm sure this study is very important.
I do not approve of pulling Gehrig into this when there's no way to prove whether it's connected to him.

 

Is there any proof that Lou Gehrig suffered from multiple concussions or brain damage?

 

Alan Schwarz' body of work on the concussion issue is sports journalism at its best ... And I have no problem with the use of Lou Gehrig's case to help illustrate the point. Being dead, Lou isn't particularly sensitive to the issue.

 

Can't wait for Denis Leary to get a hold of this one.

 

You might want to read the article

"The finding’s relevance to Gehrig is less clear. But the Yankees legend had a well-documented history of significant concussions on the baseball field, and perhaps others sustained as a battering-ram football halfback in high school and at Columbia University."

 

Next thing you know, we're gonna find out Steve Blass didn't have Steve Blass Disease.

 

And Larry Bird didn't have White Man's Disease ...

 

This statement raises a couple of questions for me.

1) What would cause a baseball player - a first baseman, no less - to incur a history of significant concussions?

2) Was there such thing as a well-documented history of concussions in the 1920s-30s?

 

Not sure I buy the study. How does the main researcher out that they had both brain trauma and ALS? The protein marker she finds is indicative of brain trauma, but that could have occurred in conjunction with ALS.

It seems like a classic case of assuming correlation equals causation. It's definitely an interesting theory (and it's a well written article), but I don't necessarily buy this particular study as proof.

 

The second page of the article details his history of concussion. After it details the four main incidents, it goes on to say this

 

My grandfather died of ALS and, having heard stories of him once being a hard drinking brawler and WWII vet in his younger days, this story does make me wonder about the possibility that he and other past ALS victims might have been similarly misdiagnosed. Interesting stuff, if true.